Hi Peter et al, I've been through your book and have begun to view your "best practices video" on the web but now have some questions regarding how best to back up WORKING files. Basically, I'm a single computer (Macbook Pro) user attempting to archive buckets onto two archival drives plus optical.

Question one: I understand the ingestion pipeline, but wonder how you'd suggest backing up the working part of that pipeline (ie.pre-"transferred") files on a daily basis. Should I back up the entire computer onto a bootable drive (separate from the archive drives)...and include all working files as part of that back-up? (once I've deleted all "transferred files")I gather I can use chronosync to do this? (since superduper apparently doesn't validate as you'd hoped-- see discussion elsewhere in this section). does it make sense to have a separate drive dedicated to only business files, plus, say, another copy of the LIghtroom catalogue?

You mention you like to back up some things in the Mirror plus incremental method with TimeMachine (but not Lightroom catalogs because so many changes). So how do I set all this up? And you referred in one place to excluding some items in Time Machine -- but I think i'ts all or nothing, right? I have to add that I don't use lightroom yet but will load it in soon. THat raises other issues -- such as should I go through all my gigabytes of data and put in keywords now before I transfer to drives (of course, Lightroom will probably let me do this later). Any flow suggestions for someone just getting caught up?

In other words...I need some sound advice in back-up software and how to approach, assuming I have (as now) all my archive on one computer (backups quickly becoming irrelevant!) Thanks a million, Mary

The closer you can come to adhering to the 3-2-1 rule the better. That being said, I'm assuming you currently have everything (i.e. O/S, program files, working files, and archive) on one big hard drive. Given that, your best bet would be to make at least one bootable clone periodically and keep it offsite. Two would be better with one offsite. In addition I would backup my working files daily (or as you make changes) to an external hard drive and keep it offline or offsite. If you have the second edition of the book, go back through the chapter on backups and see which configuration most closely matches yours. Peter, also talks about using swappers for your working files if you are so inclined. Hope that helps.

My questions go more toward the "hows." If I put my working files, including all my documents, onto the same "clone" that has the archiveon it ? Can the software do this without writing over the archive (assume I'll delete archived folders from my internal drive [the transferred folder] before I do all this). My tendency is to want to make periodic backups on another smaller drive to protect my document data (biz data, etc). Does partitioning come in here anywhere. Thx Mary

Partitioning comes into play when you are cloning. Cloning software can clone individual partitions. If you've got everything on one hard drive, ideally you would want three partitions: one for the O/S and program files, one for the working files, and one for the archive. You might want to have a fourth partition for your user/data files or you could lump them in with your O/S and program files.

Thanks Dan. As I read Peter's book, I'm getting more of an idea how things work. I've downloaded the trial of Chronosyn. I do have a question...what's the difference between using Chronosync and Time Machine? I guess TM gives you hourly 'states" (Mirror + incremental) and Chronosync doesn't? Or does it? If all I'm doing is backing up -- what are pros and cons of using TM versus Chronosync? (assuming I can omit things like Lightroom catalogues from each).

Also, as in my first question above..Should I put my archive on the same external drive I keep working files on? And if so MUST I partition...ie. I wouldn't want to say "mirror my computer" and have it wipe out all the archive. Relatedly, do you always therefore transfer "additiive" backup files to the archive by hand through the finder?(page 239 is an example of my situation). I'd be happy to just put archives on a dedicated drive to be safe.

Unfortunately I can't help you with TM and Chronosync. I'm on Windows.

If your configuration is like that on p. 239 then yes your working files backup would be on the same hard drive as your archive and archive backup (will call those primary and secondary archives). Your System and Programs should be on its own partition as should your primary working files, say C and D partitions for example. You should clone only your C partition to the primary and secondary archive drives. I'm not sure how that works on a Mac, but you should be able to do it without overwriting your archives and working files backups. You should backup your working files using Chronosync to both external drives and keep the secondary one offline/offsite. I am assuming you have only one internal hard drive that will be partitioned. My guess is you will also need to partition your primary and secondary archive drives to support the clones, working files backups, and both archive copies (e.g. C, D, and F for the archives). Now follow the book for doing your backups. Hope that helps.

As to Time Machine v. Chronosync, there's a simple reason why I don't suggest Time Machine for image collections. Time Machine is really designed for smaller documents, like email, word processing, or even your music files (which don't ever change). Time Machine wants to make an additional copy of the file each time you make any change at all. This can rapidly fill your backup drive, since images in a workflow probably get touched or moved a number of times between ingestion and archive.